This paper presents a model where wage differences between men and women arise from taste-based discrimination and monopsonistic mechanisms. We show how preferences against women affect heterogeneity in firms' pay policies in the context of an imperfect labour market, deriving a test for the...

The matching method for treatment evaluation does not balance selective unobserved differences between treated and non-treated. We derive a simple correction term if there is an instrument that shifts the treatment probability to zero in specific cases. Policies with eligibility restrictions,...

The paper studies the efficiency of Swedish labour market policies for young workers. Using age discontinuities which define which policy regime an individual is covered by we present quasi-experimental evidence on the relative efficiency of different policy regimes currently in use. Results...

This paper provides a critique of the "unemployment invariance hypothesis", according to which the behavior of the labor market ensures that the long-run unemployment rate is independent of the size of the capital stock, productivity and the labor force. Using Solow growth and endogenous growth...

In 2007, the Swedish employer-paid payroll tax was cut on a large scale for young workers, substantially reducing labor costs for this group. We estimate a small impact, both on employment and on wages, implying a labor demand elasticity for young workers at around -0.31. Since the tax reduction...

This is a study of the link between taxes and youth self-employment, using a Swedish reform implemented in 2007-09 which suddenly made the payroll tax and the self-employment tax vary by age. The results suggest that youth self-employment is insensitive to tax reductions, both in the short run...

We evaluate a non-targeted summer youth employment program (SYEP) for high school students aged 16-19 in Stockholm, Sweden, where public sector job offers were as good as randomly assigned. In contrast to previous studies evaluating SYEP that targeted groups with lower socioeconomic status, we...

Unemployment was singled out by John Maynard Keynes as one of the principle faults of capitalism; the other is excessive inequality. Obviously, there is some link between these two faults: because: since most people living in capitalist economies must work for wages as a major source of their...

Since its enactment in 2005, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been implemented in 200 districts in India. Based on state-by-state employment demand-supply data and the use of funds released under NREGA, it is found that, although it is a demand-driven scheme, there are...

The effect of minimum wages on employment is a matter of debate, and the existing empirical literature contains mixed results. One reason for this is the methodological difficulties involved where changes in minimum wages are endogenous to other important economic changes. To overcome this...